A Spectator's Notebook
The Prime Minister has suffered what is probably the most wretched misfortune that can overtake any author: he has lost the only copy of an unpublished book which he wrote years ago. It was among the private possessions stolen from him in one of the eight break-ins to which he has been so mysteriously subjected.
His book was about the State and the Railways. It sprang from an essay of great distinction for which he was awarded the Gladstone Memorial Prize as an undergraduate at Oxford. The essay, of 18,000 words, with 400 footnotes, covered the period 1823-63 and disclosed, among other products of the young Wilson's research, that Gladstone (already a hero of his) had once devised a scheme for nationalising the railways. It came to the notice of Jonathan Cape, who asked if he would extend his account to the year 1914, with a view to publication. He did so.
The forthcoming book, already set in type at a cost of £57 13s 6c1 plus £10 lOs 5d for small type and £2 lOs Od for proofs, was advertised in October 1939 — but the war prevented publication. It was kept in type, however, and insured by Cape at an annual premium of 6s 2d. But then, in 1946; the type was "distributed", as printers say — broken up. In all, the enterprise had cost Jonathan Cape £98 19s 10d. No one knows why it was abandoned.
It was to have been a book of 288 pages, and Mr Wilson had a proof Copy. That is what was stolen. Alas, it cannot be replaced. The publishers have no copy, nor has anyone else. What is more, the original essay has disappeared in Oxford, no doubt long since. It is not to be found in the Bodleian Library or in the University Archives. A unique work has been lost to posterity — unless the police are able to recover it.
D The hullabaloo over Mrs Thatcher's strictures on the Soviet Union is greatly to be deplored. Mr Roy Mason's outburst against Mrs Thatcher was ill-judged and unseemly from a minister of the Crown. The debate will not be dignified by resort to personal abuse.
The proper place for exchanges between the parties on an issue of such grave and fundamental importance is, of course, the House of Commons. More than that, however, the Prime Minister of the day and the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition ought in all good sense to have regular private discussions on defence. The national interest requires nothing less than a bipartisan defence policy. But no such policy can be developed unless the one is in the confidence of the other.
It is to be hoped that Mr Wilson will extend an appropriate invitation to Mrs Thatcher — if not before next month's White Paper on defence, then immediately afterwards.
D With predictable exceptions like the Sunday Express the press coverage of Concorde's debut was notably equivocal: the headline of the Times leader — 'The Wonder and the Folly' — set the tone. This raises the question of the press's attitude to the Concorde project all along. It has taken more than a dozen years, and more than £600 million of British public money to build this aeroplane which it transpires no one will willingly buy. Quite apart from the broader arguments involved, about the 'environment' and about technological progress, or rather, accepting the most extreme arguments in favour of Concorde, its building has been nothing less than scandalous. The way in which costs have escalated has made a mockery of any idea acontrolling governrnent spending.
Who should have exposed this scandal? The record of the House of Commons ' has been unimpressive. It remained for the press to apply relentless scrutiny to inform the public of the turn of events. But the press, by and large, the Observer aside, had adopted towards Concorde' an attitude not only reverential, but of , uncritical reverence.
0 One of the strangest partisans of Concorde is Miss Brigid Brophy, who has been writing about it again in the New Statesman. Strange might seem an unfair word to use, but in view of Miss Brophy's known views and activities — as a novelist and author of books on music and psychology, as a proponent (a commendably tireless one) of a public lending right for authors, as a passionate vegetarian she might have been expected to side with the 'ecology' party. Perhaps she is as tired as many others of that word. All the same, the logical flaws in her argument (which is a fact of an emotional sort) hardly need pointing out. Of course Concorde is a brilliant technical achievement: so is a nuclear bomb; certainly it is beautiful: so is a Toledo sword. That does not mean that one wishes to have the one dropped on oneself, or to be run through with the other.
0 The latest edition of Dod's Parliamentary Companion is out. This excellent compendium contains a wide variety of information — apart from that about the House of Commons ranging from biographies of Irish peers to a list of Government and public offices, with their leading personnel. (It would be useful if the pages covering the Ministry in this section were set out in a way which made it possible td see at a glance the number of MPs holding salaried office, and the number of PPSs.) It is pleasing to find, between 'Surnames of Peers and Peeresses where they differ from Title', and 'Addressing Letters to Persons of Title', the full list of Precedence. It ranges all the way from No 1, the Queen, to No 193, `Professional Gentle
men, as artists, literary men, merchants, and others, not engaged in manual labour, farming of land, or retail trade', who 'are considered to have some station in society, although the law takes no cognizance of them inter se'.
Among the miscellanea contained in Dod's is the composition of the Royal Fine Arts Commission. One of this body's functions is t9 form an opinion about the merits of new buildings when it is proposed that they should replace existing ones. Now, it appears that eight out of seventeen Commissioners are Fellows or Associates of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and another is evidently a qualified architect. This is rather like trying 3 man on a serious criminal charge in front of a jury of. old lags'. In view of the widespread disquiet about the power of architects in this country would it not be better if the body performing this delicate task were preponderantly composed of disinterested laymen?
Ei The current wisdom, in book trade circles, is that despite the economic climate more books are being published in this country than ever before. The Bookseller recently published some figures which showed a marked increase in output last year over previous years. So the publishing world is safe . . . but not quite. The truth is more complex. The fact is that a great many books, published by the overseas subsidiaries of English companies, are registered in this country without actually being sold here; this was particularly the case last year, and it has been worked out by an astute trade journalist that this alone accounted for last year's inflated numbers and that, in fact, fewer books were published in England during that period than for some years .past. The situation has not improved so far in 1976, and there seems no reason why it should do so. Readers are in for a lean time. Fiction is especially hard-hit, and now that some local authorities have stopped their libraries from buying novels it is likely to get much worse. Our literary editor has calculated that there were twice as many novels published in the same period last year. It may be that writers of fiction will take their aprtlaicsetsalongside writers of poetry as minority
Some ways of making a rejoinder are more surreptitious, or if you like, subtle than others. Richard West learns that his recent articles in The Spectator on Ireland have been fiercely attacked in the Irish Times — in that paper's regular column in Irish. Perhaps the offence was caused by his reference to the Irish Times as a great English-language newspaper.
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